"Precisely. She doesn"t resemble me," said Kate, "who at least know what I lose."
Well, it had all risen for Densher to a considerable interest. "And Aunt Maud--why shouldn"t _she_ know? I mean that your friend there isn"t really anything. Does she suppose him of ducal value?"
"Scarcely; save in the sense of being uncle to a duke. That"s undeniably something. He"s the best moreover we can get."
"Oh, oh!" said Densher; and his doubt was not all derisive.
"It isn"t Lord Mark"s grandeur," she went on without heeding this; "because perhaps in the line of that alone--as he has no money--more could be done. But she"s not a bit sordid; she only counts with the sordidness of others. Besides, he"s grand enough, with a duke in his family and at the other end of the string. _The_ thing"s his genius."
"And do you believe in that?"
"In Lord Mark"s genius?" Kate, as if for a more final opinion than had yet been asked of her, took a moment to think. She balanced indeed so that one would scarce have known what to expect; but she came out in time with a very sufficient "Yes!"
"Political?"
"Universal. I don"t know at least," she said, "what else to call it when a man"s able to make himself without effort, without violence, without machinery of any sort, so intensely felt. He has somehow an effect without his being in any traceable way a cause."
"Ah but if the effect," said Densher with conscious superficiality, "isn"t agreeable--?"
"Oh but it is!"
"Not surely for every one."
"If you mean not for you," Kate returned, "you may have reasons--and men don"t count. Women don"t know if it"s agreeable or not."
"Then there you are!"
"Yes, precisely--that takes, on his part, genius."
Densher stood before her as if he wondered what everything she thus promptly, easily and above all amusingly met him with, would have been found, should it have come to an a.n.a.lysis, to "take." Something suddenly, as if under a last determinant touch, welled up in him and overflowed--the sense of his good fortune and her variety, of the future she promised, the interest she supplied. "All women but you are stupid. How can I look at another? You"re different and different--and then you"re different again. No marvel Aunt Maud builds on you--except that you"re so much too good for what she builds _for_. Even "society"
won"t know how good for it you are; it"s too stupid, and you"re beyond it. You"d have to pull it uphill--it"s you yourself who are at the top.
The women one meets--what are they but books one has already read?
You"re a whole library of the unknown, the uncut." He almost moaned, he ached, from the depth of his content. "Upon my word I"ve a subscription!"
She took it from him with her face again giving out all it had in answer, and they remained once more confronted and united in their essential wealth of life. "It"s you who draw me out. I exist in you.
Not in others."
It had been, however, as if the thrill of their a.s.sociation itself pressed in him, as great felicities do, the sharp spring of fear. "See here, you know: don"t, _don"t_--!"
"Don"t what?"
"Don"t fail me. It would kill me."
She looked at him a minute with no response but her eyes. "So you think you"ll kill _me_ in time to prevent it?" She smiled, but he saw her the next instant as smiling through tears; and the instant after this she had got, in respect to the particular point, quite off. She had come back to another, which was one of her own; her own were so closely connected that Densher"s were at best but parenthetic. Still she had a distance to go. "You do then see your way?" She put it to him before they joined--as was high time--the others. And she made him understand she meant his way with Milly.
He had dropped a little in presence of the explanation; then she had brought him up to a sort of recognition. He could make out by this light something of what he saw, but a dimness also there was, undispelled since his return. "There"s something you must definitely tell me. If our friend knows that all the while--?"
She came straight to his aid, formulating for him his anxiety, though quite to smooth it down. "All the while she and I here were growing intimate, you and I were in unmentioned relation? If she knows that, yes, she knows our relation must have involved your writing to me."
"Then how could she suppose you weren"t answering?"
"She doesn"t suppose it."
"How then can she imagine you never named her?"
"She doesn"t. She knows now I did name her. I"ve told her everything.
She"s in possession of reasons that will perfectly do."
Still he just brooded. "She takes things from you exactly as I take them?"
"Exactly as you take them."
"She"s just such another victim?"
"Just such another. You"re a pair."
"Then if anything happens," said Densher, "we can console each other?"
"Ah something _may_ indeed happen," she returned, "if you"ll only go straight!"
He watched the others an instant through the window. "What do you mean by going straight?"
"Not worrying. Doing as you like. Try, as I"ve told you before, and you"ll see. You"ll have me perfectly, always, to refer to."
"Oh rather, I hope! But if she"s going away?"
It pulled Kate up but a moment. "I"ll bring her back. There you are.
You won"t be able to say I haven"t made it smooth for you."
He faced it all, and certainly it was queer. But it wasn"t the queerness that after another minute was uppermost. He was in a wondrous silken web, and it was amusing. "You spoil me!"
He wasn"t sure if Mrs. Lowder, who at this juncture reappeared, had caught his word as it dropped from him; probably not, he thought, her attention being given to Mrs. Stringham, with whom she came through and who was now, none too soon, taking leave of her. They were followed by Lord Mark and by the other men, but two or three things happened before any dispersal of the company began. One of these was that Kate found time to say to him with furtive emphasis: "You must go now!" Another was that she next addressed herself in all frankness to Lord Mark, drew near to him with an almost reproachful "Come and talk to _me!_"--a challenge resulting after a minute for Densher in a consciousness of their installation together in an out-of-the-way corner, though not the same he himself had just occupied with her. Still another was that Mrs.
Stringham, in the random intensity of her farewells, affected him as looking at him with a small grave intimation, something into which he afterwards read the meaning that if he had happened to desire a few words with her after dinner he would have found her ready. This impression was naturally light, but it just left him with the sense of something by his own act overlooked, unappreciated. It gathered perhaps a slightly sharper shade from the mild formality of her "Good-night, sir!" as she pa.s.sed him; a matter as to which there was now nothing more to be done, thanks to the alertness of the young man he by this time had appraised as even more harmless than himself. This personage had forestalled him in opening the door for her and was evidently--with a view, Densher might have judged, to ulterior designs on Milly--proposing to attend her to her carriage. What further occurred was that Aunt Maud, having released her, immediately had a word for himself. It was an imperative "Wait a minute," by which she both detained and dismissed him; she was particular about her minute, but he hadn"t yet given her, as happened, a sign of withdrawal.
"Return to our little friend. You"ll find her really interesting."
"If you mean Miss Theale," he said, "I shall certainly not forget her.
But you must remember that, so far as her "interest" is concerned, I myself discovered, I--as was said at dinner--invented her."
"Well, one seemed rather to gather that you hadn"t taken out the patent. Don"t, I only mean, in the press of other things, too much neglect her."
Affected, surprised by the coincidence of her appeal with Kate"s, he asked himself quickly if it mightn"t help him with her. He at any rate could but try. "You"re all looking after my manners. That"s exactly, you know, what Miss Croy has been saying to me. _She_ keeps me up--she has had so much to say about them."
He found pleasure in being able to give his hostess an account of his pa.s.sage with Kate that, while quite veracious, might be rea.s.suring to herself. But Aunt Maud, wonderfully and facing him straight, took it as if her confidence were supplied with other props. If she saw his intention in it she yet blinked neither with doubt nor with acceptance; she only said imperturbably: "Yes, she"ll herself do anything for her friend; so that she but preaches what she practises."
Densher really quite wondered if Aunt Maud knew how far Kate"s devotion went. He was moreover a little puzzled by this special harmony; in face of which he quickly asked himself if Mrs. Lowder had bethought herself of the American girl as a distraction for him, and if Kate"s mastery of the subject were therefore but an appearance addressed to her aunt.
What might really _become_ in all this of the American girl was therefore a question that, on the latter contingency, would lose none of its sharpness. However, questions could wait, and it was easy, so far as he understood, to meet Mrs. Lowder. "It isn"t a bit, all the same, you know, that I resist. I find Miss Theale charming."